The Sermon Text -- Luke 12:32-40

“Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. “Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks. Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them. If he comes during the middle of the night, or near dawn, and finds them so, blessed are those slaves. “But know this: if the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”

Sermon – Do Not Be Afraid Little Flock

“Do not be afraid little flock, for it is your father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

Don’t be afraid. Don’t worry. It’ll be fine. Those are nice words, but do they really have any power? They sound more like nice platitudes you might say to someone to calm them down or when you don’t really know what else to say.
Truth be told, our lives are full of fears and anxieties that don’t just go away because someone tells us to “Don’t worry, be happy.” I have anxiety about all sorts of things, from whether or not my daughter has asthma to hoping we will be safe on our recent drive to my family farm near La Crosse as other drivers zoomed by us seemingly without regard to safety, to whether or not my sermon will be meaningful, to name just a few fears I can think of at this moment.

Most of us are plagued with some kind of anxiety in this life; it seems to be a part of our flesh. Managing some kind of anxiety or stress or fear is a frequent part of our everyday experience. But breaking into this life of worry come Jesus’ words to me, and to you: “Do not be afraid…” “Do not be afraid little flock, for it is your father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” In that one sentence we see that Jesus proclamation to us is more than mere words. Jesus tells us to not fear, and then he tells us why. Why? Because it is God’s good pleasure to give us the kingdom. Why? Because we have an identity that reaches beyond our daily lives of stress and worry. Our identity is as members of God’s flock, sheep of the good shepherd, followers of Jesus, God’s only Son. We have the gift of belonging to God. Simply because of our identity as God’s little flock – not because of anything we might achieve or accomplish on our own – we receive God’s kingdom. And, not only does God give us this gift, God gives it to us gladly. In fact it brings God joy to give it to us. It makes God happy to free us from our fears and worries. It is God’s good pleasure to give us the kingdom!

We don’t ever need to live fearfully or with a lack of confidence in our status or relationship with God. Jesus comes right out to reveal that the core of God is love. Everything about our relationship with this great creator flows from grace – this fact that God loves us, not begrudgingly or out of obligation, but because it makes God happy.

One of the best books I’ve read over the past few years has been, Mountains beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder. This book tells the story of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Harvard faculty doctor who takes his expertise in curing infectious diseases to the western hemisphere’s poorest of the poor in Haiti. Part of what makes the book so compelling is Dr. Farmer’s attitude toward the people he serves. After Dr. Farmer’s successful treatment of young boy who had a potentially deadly strain of TB, the boy’s mother sought out Farmer to thank him: After she expressed her gratefulness to Farmer for saving the life of her boy, Kidder writes, “Farmer looked away, just a quick glance to the left and the right. I’d seen him do this in patients’ rooms at the Brigham [hospital in Boston as well] – look at the patient, then glance up at the TV for a moment, then return, as if disconnected so as to reconnect fully. He gazed at the woman and pursed his lips and said softly in Spanish, ‘For me, it is a privilege.’” Farmer, by the way he carries himself, demonstrates clearly to all his patients the fact that it is his pleasure to serve them. He isn’t doing it out of obligation or guilt or even personal accolades, and certainly not for financial reward. Dr. Farmer simply values each person he treats so much that it is his joy to heal them. In the same way, God says to us, “It’s my pleasure to roll on out all that I have for you.” God says to us, “Don’t be afraid, I’m on your side, it’s my pleasure to serve you.” In fact, God values us so much, that Jesus even went to a cross, to heal us of our sin and brokenness and ensure that we will be a part of the kingdom. It is God’s good pleasure to love us; we don’t need to trust in anything but God’s power.

Our response to this good news is to live with hope, to live expectantly, to live with confidence now. Not in the future, but right in the midst of whatever assails us in this life whether it’s chemotherapy, broken relationships, anger, betrayal, depression, anxiety, apathy… These things don’t go away in this life, but because we know our identity as God’s sheep, as those whom God enjoys loving, we live with all these things with hope.

When you know right now that it is God’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom, it changes how you live your life today. Having that kind of assurance in life changes us into people who live with a tremendous sense of hope. Hope is what makes this life’s separations, deaths, diseases, disappointments, and mistakes bearable – we know that they are not the end, they do not define our future in a complete way. For the Christian, to live is to hope.

What does it mean to live expectantly or with hope? Remember a couple of months ago when it was announced that Elizabeth Edwards, the wife of Presidential hopeful John Edwards, was diagnosed with incurable metastatic cancer. It was the same time that White house spokesman Tony Snow also announced that he was contending with a malignancy of colon cancer that had spread and was no longer curable.

Many Americans were stunned to hear that the Edwards would continue their quest for the White House. I recall watching Larry King Live when people called in to comment on the supposed scandal of going forward with a campaign for president with a wife for whom death is imminent. At first, there was a lot of judgment for that decision. But, whatever you think of the Edwards’ political views; I do admire them for moving forward. Why? When asked why she would continue to campaign for her husband, even in the face of her diagnosis of incurable cancer, Elizabeth Edwards put her decision like this: “I don’t want [dying of cancer] to be my legacy.” She didn’t want fear to be her legacy, but hope in the future.

An article in Time magazine called “Living with Cancer” said that fellow cancer patients and their doctors are less surprised by such decisions to push forward with the things you were doing yesterday in the face of such a diagnosis. There’s been a great sea change, the article went on to say, asserting that treatments for incurable cancer have progressed so far that there is a sort of new place where many people are “living with cancer”. It’s great that things have come around to the perspective of “living with” instead of “dying from.”

But this isn’t the first time this shift in perspective has occurred. When I was in seminary, there was a man who came back to the church after having been away for a long time. He became a member of the congregation in which I was doing my contextual learning while I was studying at the seminary. He sat in the front row every week. He joined the choir and he eventually became part of the music and worship ministry team. He taught me and our congregation something important when he had the courage to ask that we pray for him and others like him in a specific way. He requested that we pray: “for James, and all others who are living with AIDS”. Back In 1994 it was a new way of looking at AIDS, as something that people could live with, not die from.
Living with… cancer or AIDS, or anxiety about relationships or money or our children’s well-being or innumerable other fears and worries, that is what life is really like for most of us. Almost all of us have to “live with” something. All of us have to live with some adversity or challenge that makes us anxious. All of us have something over which we cannot triumph, but have to simply cope with. And, whether we like to consider it or not, we are living with the prospect of death at any time. Most of us at some point in our lives will have to hope in the face of despair, or love in the face of hate, or forgive in the face of tremendous hurt. All of us, to a greater or lesser degree, have something we have to “live with.”

But as believers, we are empowered by Jesus to “live with” hope, rather than die from despair. As people claimed by God’s promise, that it is God’s good pleasure to give us the kingdom, we see these examples of people living in the midst of adversity as inspiring because that is what God has called us to do. In Jesus’ death and resurrection, we’ve been given the gift of moving forward even in the face of adversity. We are called to live with hope in the midst of this anxious and fearful world. Who else has given us the courage to live with hope even in the face of despair or war or addiction or disease or loneliness or hunger? Who else is promotes loving your enemies? Who else is authors the idea of suffering or servant love? Being able to move forward in the face of adversity - that is a real witness to faith. Moving forward is a mark of hope; it’s a witness to Jesus. So, today, hear this call from Jesus, Have no fear little flock, for it is God’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.

I don’t know if Elizabeth Edwards’ faith is the reason she made the decision she did, but she is certainly acting like a person of faith by moving forward with her life, even in the face of death. I don’t know what has happened with James back at my seminary congregation in Minneapolis, but I know that he lived his life expectantly, faithfully relying on Jesus to take away his fear and empower him to live his life in a difficult circumstance. Hope is always the way for us as people of faith. One of my favorite stories about Martin Luther is his response to a questioner who asked what he would do if he knew that the world would end tomorrow. Luther apparently responded, “I would plant a tree today”. That is hope. That is faith. That is life!
Hope in the face of adversity. Someone who hopes literally looks at death and says to death, “In your face”. Sounds like Martin Luther. Sounds like a person moving forward. Sounds like a person who lives with hope. Sounds like someone who has been captured by the promise of Christ - Have no fear little flock. Amen.

 © 2007